Shake the Dust

In this month’s bonus episode, we talk all about why and how to have difficult conversations about important political subjects with people who disagree with you. We get into:

- What are goals are in these kinds of conversations

- Strategies for regulating our emotions and achieving those goals

- The power dynamics to keep in mind when having these conversations

- And afterward, our segment Which Tab Is Still Open?, diving into a fascinating conversation with Rev. William Barber about what Democrats could gain if they paid attention to poor voters

You can find the video of the portion of this episode that we recorded live at ktfpress.com.

Mentioned in the episode

- Disarming Leviathan by Caleb Campbell

- The Deeply Formed Life by Rich Villodas

- Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero

- When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert

- Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Shila Heen

- Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, and Ron McMillan

- John Blake’s interview with Rev. William Barber

Credits

- Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads

- Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.

- Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.

- Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

- Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

- Editing by Sy Hoekstra

- Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

- Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribers

Transcript

Introduction

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending – F#, B#, E, D#, B – with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Sy Hoekstra: Hey everyone, it's Sy. Quick note before we start. Stay tuned after this recording of our conversation, which we did on Substack Live because we recorded our segment, Which Tab Is Still Open, separately due to some time constraints we had. Thanks so much for listening, and the episode officially starts now.

Jonathan Walton: If your relationship is broken by what you think about trans rights, then I think we need to examine what kind of relationship you had in the first place, because I think our relationships have to be much more than our opinions about the latest political topic of the day.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking… [long pause] Jesus, confronting injustice. I am Jonathan Walton [laughter], and we’re live on Substack.

Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan starts the live by forgetting our tagline [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: It’s true. It’s true. So welcome to Shake the Dust. My name is Jonathan. We are seeking justice, confronting injustice. See, this is live. Live is hard. Go for it, Sy.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Thank you for being here, Sy.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, sure. I'm Sy Hoekstra, that's Jonathan Walton.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: We're doing this live, if you couldn't tell. This is a live recording of our podcast. We are gonna ease into it, and then we'll be good. Don't worry.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: We're doing this live as a recording, and then we will be releasing the audio and the video later to our paid subscribers. So if you're listening, welcome. Alright, we are gonna be talking today about a subject that comes to us from a listener that came in as a question on our finale episode, but it came in a couple hours too late, and I missed it before we started recording. But it was such an interesting question that we decided to make a whole episode out of it. So thank you to Ashley, our listener, who sent this in. We will be talking about basically, how to regulate yourself and actually strategies you can employ when having difficult conversations with people you disagree with on important subjects, the power dynamics and everything all around it, and literally just how to do it, which is actually kind of something that a lot of people have been asking us.

Ashley comes at it from a really good angle that we'll be talking about too. So we'll get to all that in a moment. We will also be talking, as we usually do in our episodes, doing our segment, Which Tab Is Still Open, diving a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletter. And this week, we will be talking about a really great interview with William Barber, the Reverend William Barber, and basically how poor people can but often don't affect elections because of the ways that the Republican and Democratic parties approach poor people. So we will get into all that in a second. I will apologize for my voice still sounding like I have a cold. It sounds like I have a cold because I have a cold, and [laughter] I have the eternal fall-winter, father of a two year old in daycare cold [laughs]. So bear with me, and I appreciate your patience. Before we get into all this, Jonathan Walton, go ahead.

Jonathan Walton: Well, if you are listening live, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for tuning in, and I just wanna encourage you to become a paid subscriber of our Substack. If you do that, you get access to video and audio of this conversation afterwards, you also get bonus episodes and our entire archive of bonus episodes as well. Plus, when you become a monthly paid subscriber, you also get access to our monthly Zoom chats, and you'll be able to comment on our posts, communicate with us on a regular basis. And so that would be great. Plus, you'll be supporting everything that we can do to help Christians confront injustice and follow Jesus. And so that's particularly in the areas of political discipleship and education, as we try to leave behind the idols of the American church. And for everybody, if you do listen to this, please go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you might listen, and give us a five-star rating. If you wanna give less than that, you can also but you can keep that to yourself.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Thank you so much for your support and encouragement. We really appreciate it.

Sy Hoekstra: Four stars and below, give us those ratings inside your head [laughter]. Also, if you have any questions and you are listening live, feel free to put them in the chat. We can answer those as we go. And alright, Jonathan, let's jump right into it.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: We got this question from Ashley. She comes at it from an interesting angle. I wanted to talk about the things that she doesn't wanna do, and then get into her questions. So she said, when she's talking about people that she disagrees with on important political or religious subjects, there's a couple of things that she did growing up. One of which was the only reason that you're engaging in these conversations as a conservative Evangelical, is to change people into you [laughs]. Is to win people over to your point of view and make them the same as you. That's your goal. Then she said she kind of grew up a little bit, went to college, became what she called it, an ungrounded liberal arts major [laughs] and started getting into what she described as the sort of millennial slash Gen Z cusp age that she is.

Just it being cool to shut people down and just defeat them, destroy them in an argument. So she’s just like, “I don't wanna be there just to make people into me. I don't wanna be there just to destroy people.” But she said now she finds herself in a position where most of the people around her largely agree with her on important subjects, and she just doesn't spend a lot of time around people who don't. So just kind of wants to know how to get into that, because she thinks it is important. She was saying some political organizers really convinced her that it is important to be doing that. And she just wants to know how you regulate yourself, how you go about it, and all that.

What’s the Goal When You’re Having Difficult Disagreements on Important Subjects?

Sy Hoekstra: And although that question was really interesting, and we're gonna jump into the actual strategies, I think Jonathan, the place to start is when you're having these conversations with someone, if you're not trying to cut them off, if you're not trying to turn them into you, and you're not trying to shut them down, what are you trying to do? What's the actual goal of what these conversations are? And for those of you who might be listening live or listening to us for the first time, this is Jonathan's wheelhouse [laughter]. This is right in what Jonathan does all the time. So Jonathan, go ahead, tell us what is the actual goal of these conversations?

Jonathan Walton: Yes. So I wanna start off by saying that none of this is easy.

Sy Hoekstra: For sure.

Jonathan Walton: I'm giving you a cookie cutter, boxed up wonderful version of a cake that you don't… Like all the ingredients are in there, all you need to do is add water. And life is not like that.

Sy Hoekstra: Yes.

The Goal Should Be Connection, not Cutting off or Colonizing

Jonathan Walton: But if you're not trying to colonize someone or make them into you, and you're not trying to cut someone off just because they disagree with you, or you're not trying to cancel them, shut them down, hold them accountable in a way that leaves them feeling like a puddle of ignorance in front of you, then what you're actually trying to do is connect with them. And so I think that God made us to be in relationship with other people, and being in relationship with other people means that we're able to sit before them, to see and be seen, without trying to consume or control the other person. It's impossible to connect with someone that you're trying to control. It's impossible to connect with someone, to love someone that you're trying to consume, like to be enmeshed with and turn into yourself.

And so I think one of the ways that we, what we're actually trying to do, instead of colonizing someone, instead of consuming someone, instead of controlling someone, is to connect with them. And so the foundational question that we need to ask ourselves when we're in conversations with someone who we disagree with is, “What do we want from the relationship?” So, yeah, we want to connect. And then we ask ourselves the deeper questions, hey, Ashley, [laughter] a deeper question of, “What kind of connection do I want with this person?” So for example, I know a couple. They voted differently in the election.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Than each other, or than you?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Than each other.

Sy Hoekstra: Okay.

Jonathan Walton: I don't know if how I voted will even come up, because that wasn't the premise of the conversation.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: But this couple, their actual argument is not about like you voted for Trump and you wanted him not to vote for him. The actual thing is, how do we love each other amidst a disagreement? Because they don't know how to hold the reality that I believe something different from you and we can still remain connected. The only option they have is to consume the other person or calling them out, “You need to think like me.” Or be consumed, “I need to think like you.” Or, “Do we need to get a divorce?” Like, no. It is possible to remain connected to someone while being in disagreement, even vehement disagreement. I think what we actually need to agree on is, how do we wanna be connected? I think that's the foundational question.

Connection Versus Conversion

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I like that a lot. It's funny, when we were talking about this, this did not… I don't do emotional health and relationship discipleship and all that kind of thing that Jonathan does all the time. And your answer did not immediately occur to me [laughs]. I was thinking about Ashley's question, and I was like, “Wait a minute, what is the goal? I don't even know.” Anyways, I think the framework of connection is super, super helpful, and I appreciate you laying it out for us. And it's helpful for a couple of reasons. One is, it roots us in actual relationships, meaning your real life circumstances are what's guiding you. Your goals in your relationships is what is guiding you in how you approach the question of how you have these conversations.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: And then it's something that is sort of an antidote to that evangelical tendency to try to convert everyone, like you were talking about.

Jonathan Walton: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Meaning, it's like, if you have a separate goal, then you can leave those other goals behind. But those other goals, if you don't have a new goal, those goals always stick. How you were raised is not going to change or move or be as prominent in your mind if you're not replacing it with something else.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: It's something that you can focus on, that you can actually do. Meaning you can make as much of an effort as you can to connect with someone, and they might not work, but you know that you did everything that you could, as opposed to trying to change someone. If your goal is changing people or defeating people, that never works. It very rarely works. And this is a weird thing that a lot of, I've realized growing up in evangelical churches, you couldn't face this directly, the fact that the overwhelming attempts that you made to evangelize someone didn't work [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Right.

Sy Hoekstra: That was just a reality that you had to ignore. The vast majority of the people that you tried, they ignored you and walked on their way. And you couldn't just stop and go like, “Maybe the thing that I'm offering them is actually not all that attractive [laughs]. Maybe the church or the community or whatever, is getting in the way of…” That stuff you couldn't face. You had to believe that you had the best way, and you had to change people, or you had to shut them down. You had to shut down your opponents if you were talking about, atheists or whatever. And that stuff, it leads to constant anxiety, because you don't control the outcome, but you want to.

You feel like you have to control the outcome, but you do not control the outcome. And when it comes to connection, again, you don't control the outcome, but the goal is that you attempt, you do everything that's in your power to attempt to reach your goal of connection with this person.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: And then it also filters out the people that you don't need to have a connection with [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: You don't have to respond to trolls. You know what I'm saying? You don't have to convert everyone. Because you're not trying to do all those things, it takes a lot of pressure off you. But I'm sorry, you were trying to say something. Go ahead.

Jonathan Walton: Well, no, I think just to give some other resources, I'm pulling from Disarming Leviathan by Caleb Campbell. I'm pulling from Deeply Formed Life by Rich Villodas. I'm pulling from Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero. I'm pulling from Difficult Conversations. There's like, Crucial Conversations and Difficult Conversations and I get them mixed up.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: And also I'm pulling from When Helping Hurts. Because, oftentimes too, When Helping Hurts, I think it's really good, because we can start out with really good intentions, with trying to do something, quote- unquote, good for someone, when I think in reality what Sy was saying is true. We can only control what we desire, how we communicate that desire, and then pursuit of that desire.

There is Vulnerability in Pursuing Connection as a Goal

Jonathan Walton: And then the other person actually gets to respond to that. And what's difficult about being vulnerable in connecting is that if you're trying to convert someone or control someone or colonize someone, they are rejecting a message or an idea. Or is it whereas if you are trying to connect with someone, you could feel rejected.

And I think it's easier to try and persuade someone, or convince someone of an idea, rather than it is to connect with you as a person. I've been rejected by people, not just romantically [laughter].

Sy Hoekstra: That too, though.

Jonathan Walton: And it hurts. That as well. It's true. Tears.

Sy Hoekstra: Sorry [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: But one of the things is… No, it's cool. It’s alright. Things worked out, praise God. But I think there's a vulnerability in, let's say I'm having a conversation with someone and they say, “Hey, Jonathan, I don't actually believe that police reform should happen. I think it's a few bad apples.” I have a few ways to go in that conversation. I could say, “Hey. Have you seen these statistics from this magazine and these FBI reports?” And go down deep into why Memphis is rejecting federal oversight. I could do that. Or I could say, “Oh, I feel afraid when you say that, because the results of that are, I'm afraid to walk outside my house because there aren't people actively pushing for reforms in the police department that occupies my neighborhood.”

And that is vulnerability, because they could then invalidate my fears with their response, or whatever the thing is, but I think that that's the costly work of following Jesus in those moments.

You Don’t Need to Have Conversations with People Whose Goals Are Not Connection

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And just one more note on the goal, because we're starting to get into how these conversations actually work. But I did just wanna say one more thing about the overall goal of connection first before we move into that, just because I think this one is important. Especially for people who do ministry work of some kind, or talk about the kind of things that we talk about publicly, is if your goal is connection and the other person's goal is not connection, that's another reason that you don't have to talk to them [laughs]. Meaning, here's what I'm talking about here. I've seen you, Jonathan, in situations with people who do the kind of classic Christian thing when they disagree with something you're saying in public. They come to you and they say, “Hey, I've heard you talking about, let's say, police brutality. And I have some thoughts, I was wondering if we could just talk about it. Could we set up some time to have a Zoom?”

And I've seen you go like, say to this person in not so many words basically, “I don't actually think that your goal is to have a conversation right now. I think you're upset with what I'm saying and you want to try and change me. Is that correct?”

Jonathan Walton: Yeah [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: You just said that to them, and not rudely. You put it in kind words, but you're just like, “Am I right in thinking that that's really what you want here?” And if they can't say no, then you will say, “Okay, I'm sorry. I don't really think I have time for this,” [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: And move on. Which is something that I don't think a lot of ministers feel the need to do. But if someone is cutting off the possibility of connection from the jump, and all they're saying is, “I want to change you,” or they're refusing to not say that all they want is to change you, [laughs] you don't have to talk to them. You have no responsibility to talk to that person because you don't have a responsibility to get into an argument with anyone. Even as a pastor. Your responsibility is to shepherd people and to lead people, and if our conversation is just going to be an argument, you don't have to talk to them. You may still want to, everything I say is subject to your personal relationships with people and your individual circumstances, but that's an option, and I want more people to know that [laughs], because I think a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to just win arguments when they don't need to be having them.

Winning Arguments Is Not What Leads to Repentance

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And also too, I think we've misidentified what the fruit of a won argument is.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: So for example, if I preach a sermon, or I have a conversation with a small group of people and I give a call to faith, and someone decides to follow Jesus, I did not win an argument. They're not saying I have the best ideas, or I presented things in a really compelling way, none of that is happening. What's happening is the Holy Spirit is working within them for them to respond in some way. It's the kindness of God that leads to repentance. The Gospel is the power and transformation. I can't say, “You know what? What I drew on that napkin, or what I put in that card, when the PowerPoint slide opened and everybody went, ooh,” like, no. That was not the power. It is the power of God that draws people nigh into himself.

Sy Hoekstra: Nigh unto himself [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yes. KJV baby. KJV [laughter].

How Do We Achieve Connection in Difficult Conversations?

Sy Hoekstra: So let's get into then the actual strategies and kind of the meat of the question.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: That's it. Let's get into, how do you regulate yourself and what do you actually do to achieve the goal of connection?

We Have to Know Ourselves to Connect with Others

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, so I think the first thing is that we can't know other people unless we know ourselves. So for example, if… let's say I was having a conversation over the weekend with someone, and they said to me, “Well, I can't believe they would think that way.” And then I said, “Well, if I were in your situation, I would be pretty angry at that response. Are you upset? Do you feel angry?” I have to know, and be willing to name that I would be angry. I have to know, and be willing to imagine, like how to empathize. Like I'm listening to them, then I wanna empathize with how they're feeling, and then ask them, “Does that resonate with you?” To build some sort of emotional connection so that we stay grounded in them as an individual and not stepping up to the argument. Like “Oh, yeah. Absolutely, what they did was wrong.”

I don't wanna participate in condemning other people either. I wanna connect with this person. We could commiserate around what happened, but I think we should prioritize what is happening for the person right in front of me, not just rehashing what happened to them. You know what I mean? Like figure out what's going on. So I think we have to know ourselves to be able to know other people, which includes that emotional awareness and intelligence. And then I think after that, we should affirm what's true about that person. And then, if we've done that, then be able to ask some questions or share our own perspective.

Sy Hoekstra: Or what's true about what they're saying.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, what's true about what they're saying, yeah. And then be able to lean in there. And if there is an opportunity and the person desires to hear what you think about it, then that's great, but I guarantee you, they will not wanna hear about what you're saying if you don't connect with them first. And so creating or building a foundation of trust that you're not trying to just convert them or consume them or colonize them, but you are trying to connect requires that first part. So slowing down, then knowing how we feel, and then being able to connect around that level is a great place to start.

Connect with Whatever Is True in What the Other Person Is Saying

Sy Hoekstra: Can you tell us what finding what's true and what someone is saying and then affirming that value, what does that actually sound like?

Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely. So let's go to a different script. There was a woman that had a conversation with me and was very upset that Black people could vote for Trump. This was a racially assigned White woman saying these things. And she was, I mean, raising her voice very loud, and so I said my goal… I did actually speak over her. I said, “So my goal in this conversation is for us as a group to remain connected and aware of each other and ourselves. What is your goal in what you're saying?” And I think that kind of threw cold water in her face because she didn't know what to do with that. And so she slowed down, then she said, “Well, I don't know. I haven't processed anything,” that was kind of what she blurted out.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I knew that, actually [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And I said, “It's great that like you need… this is a space to process.” I said, “What I would love for you to do is to slow down and tell us what you want, because I don't think you want me to be angry, and that's actually how I'm feeling right now. Was that your goal, was for me to feel angry and disconnected from you?” And she goes, “Well, you shouldn't be mad at me.” I said, “I can own my feelings. I didn't say you made me angry. I said my feeling in what you're saying is anger. Is that your intention? Is that what you're trying to foster? Because I would actually like to have my emotional response match your intent.” And it was not an easy conversation, but she did say after about 15 minutes of this kind of back and forth, she said, “I wanted to just close my computer,” is what she said, “But I didn't.” And then I said, “I'm so glad you chose to stay.”

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: “I’m so glad you chose to remain in our group. And to affirm again, you are valuable here, we desire your contribution and things like that.”

Sy Hoekstra: And you were specifically in like a cohort that you were leading.

Jonathan Walton: And I think it is hard to move towards someone who… Yeah, I was leading. I was leading. And everybody else was silent. They were not saying anything, but I had follow up conversations with one person after that, who said they were very grateful that I did that, because they were like, “I didn't know that you could be patient like that with someone so animated.” They were like, “I don't understand how you were calm in that situation.” I said, “Well, I was calm because I knew who I was. I was facilitating the conversation. I was leading the dialogue.” And I said, “When I’m with my mom,” not my mom, my mom passed away. “But if I was with my dad or my brothers in that conversation, I would have to do the same thing, but it will require more work because of the emotional history that's there. This history of my family and stuff under the bridge.”

So each relationship is gonna bring with it its own porcupine quills, if you will, but that doesn't mean our steps change. I think our goal is to love our neighbor as ourselves. And if we don't know ourselves, we can’t love our neighbors. So in the way that we would want patience and want grace and want respect, I think we need to extend that as best as we possibly can by trying to build a connection.

Sy Hoekstra: And if you're talking about, I think that's really good for a discipleship situation. Anybody who disciples people, I hope you just learned something from that story [laughs]. But if you're having, by the way, Jonathan, I've noticed as we're talking, there's a very long delay. So I apologize.

Jonathan Walton: No worries.

Sy Hoekstra: I just interrupted you with something that was related to something you said like three sentences later, I'm sorry [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: You’re all good [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: So I think when it comes to a political issue, if you're talking to someone who's saying something that you find very hurtful or very upsetting or whatever, which is where I think a lot of these questions come up for people. For a lot of people it's, “How do I talk to a Trump supporter?” That's kind of the question.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: And then, like Jonathan said, it's going to be very hard. It's going to depend on your relationship with that person. And this work can be hard. It's very hard to get people to talk about their emotions, but that's what we need to do when somebody's talking… if they're being very anti-immigrant. You need to find a way into how they're communicating and what they're saying as angry as they are, whatever. An underlying thing might be, “I feel insecure about the economy of our country, I feel insecure about my job. I feel like I'm not gonna be able to provide because somebody's gonna undercut me in wages or whatever.” All that stuff. And the way to connect with that person is to say, “That makes sense, that feeling. And if I felt that that was happening to me, I would also be insecure.”

Maybe it is also happening to you, you know what I mean? You have to just find a way into that feeling, and then say, “But the way that I feel secure is X, Y and Z, about…” If you want to talk about solidarity and lifting everyone up actually makes all of us more secure. You can get into the nitty gritty of immigration and economics, if you know that stuff, and say [laughs], “Actually, in general, immigrants really help us economically. And so I actually feel more secure. I know that immigrants commit crime at lower rates than citizens. And I trust the numbers that say that, and that comes from police departments. We can go look at your police department stats. So immigrants coming in actually lowers crime. I know that's a shock, but. So I feel more secure.” All that kind of like, you try and find a way to connect on the emotion and speak in a… What I'm doing right now is summarizing and being slightly glib, but [laughs] I think that's the best you can do.

People You Connect with May Not Change, or Take a Long Time to Change

Sy Hoekstra: And I know to some people, if you have a really obstinate person that feels hopeless and impossible, and I think what we're saying is you give it your best shot, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And there's nothing you can do about it not working. And it might also be something, by the way, where you talk to them now and that's the beginning of a 10-year process of them changing.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: You don't know. This is why I said that stuff's out of your hands, is what I mean. So that's where we need to find our own internal piece about it. And then, I don't know, there's a number of other thoughts I have about what you have to do to prepare for all that, like the prep work that goes into it. But do you have other thoughts about that, Jonathan?

Jonathan Walton: Well, I mean, I think just all of what you said is true, and I just wanna lean into what you said about, you cannot rush the process of that relationship. Because if your relationship is broken by what you think about trans rights, then I think we need to examine what kind of relationship you had in the first place. Because I think our relationships have to be much more than our opinions about the latest political topic of the day. We've got to be able to have conversations with people that are deeper and contain the multitudes that a person holds, as opposed to the latest tweet or share that they had.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: We're talking with people, we're not talking with a minimally viable product that's before us like, “Do I want this or not in my life?” And so I think even in the, let's take the example, like Caleb Campbell did a great example of this immigration. If someone actually believed that they were going to be invaded, I'm making quotes with my fingers, but invaded and they're gonna lose their job and they’re gonna lose their emotional and spiritual and social security, not Social Security like the actual entitlement program, but social security like their feeling of social safety, that is objectively terrifying. If that is the narrative, then we can actually connect with people around why they're afraid.

And if we connect with them why they're afraid, not convince them why they shouldn't be scared, then you actually have the opportunity to share with them why they may not need to be afraid. Because, as Sy said, immigrants crime actually goes down. Immigrants actually pay billions of dollars in taxes. Immigrants actually start businesses at a higher rate than our native population. All those things, but we can't get there unless we're connected. We cannot correct people without connecting with them. So, yeah.

Getting Good at Connection Takes Practice

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I think this takes a ton of practice.

Jonathan Walton: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: You will be bad at it at first, and that's [laughter]… So I think another part of it is you have to know why it's important to you. That's another thing, and that's a personal thing. But you have to understand why connection with someone whose political beliefs or whatever you find kind of abhorrent [laughs] is something that is important to you, that work has to be done on your own and ahead of time.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: You also have to take into account… sorry. You'll just get better at it over time. So meaning it, I'd say it's only like in the last few years that I've really been able to participate in extremely difficult conversations about politics or whatever, and just be okay [laughter], no matter what the consequence of it is. And sometimes that's still not true, depending on the relationship I have with the person, but I don't know. You’ve got to remember that people… actually, at the beginning I remember I told you she talked about, as a young person or as millennials and Gen Z wanting to shut people down. And I actually don't think that's a generational thing. I think that's just a young people thing.

I think when I was 22 I thought it was awesome to shut people down [laughs]. And I think all the most recent, this is something I know from justice advocacy work, but all the recent neurology science basically tells us you don't have an adult brain until you're like 25 [laughter]. You don't have your impulse control, you know what I mean? It's just hard.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: And it just takes time to retrain yourself to do something, It can take years. So fear not, is what I'm saying, if you think you're bad at this.

Being Aware of How Much You Know about a Subject

Sy Hoekstra: And then I think something that's kind of deceptively emotional is the things that don't seem emotional, like knowing your facts and being able to bow out of conversations when you don't know your facts [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Like if you have a feeling that something's wrong, but somebody's saying something wrong, or bigoted, or whatever, but you don't have the information, A, it's gonna make you much more comfortable if you do have the information, if you've read up on it, if you know the subjects. Because you find as you dig deeper into different political issues and hot button topics, there really are only so many opinions that people have, and they’re usually based on relatively shallow understandings of information. So you can know a lot of the arguments ahead of time. You can know a lot of the important facts ahead of time. You’ve just kind of got to pay attention and that's something that happens over time.

And then if you don't know that stuff, and you try and engage anyway just based on instinct, you're gonna have a lot of times where you say stuff that you regret later [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: You're gonna have a lot of times where you maybe even make up something just because you wanna be right and you wanna win.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, you wanna win.

Sy Hoekstra: And then bowing out and letting someone believe their terrible thing without you fighting against it, sometimes that can be really hard, but that's an emotional issue, that's something about you being…

Jonathan Walton: Right. That's a feeling. Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. It's always gonna be feelings, and that's why you got to have your goals clear, and whenever you can, know your stuff.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Adam just said something, really quick. He said, “I've literally had notification of high heart rate from my Apple watch during such conversations.”

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Yes.

Jonathan Walton: And being able to have conversations without a high heart rate notification is becoming more normal.

Sy Hoekstra: Yes. Good.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, that has happened to me so many times. And it's true. It's fewer, it's less than what it was before that.

Sy Hoekstra: That’s so funny. I don't have a smart watch, so that's never happened to me, but that's so funny. And I'm glad that it's improving for both of you [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And it's a way to track if your spiritual formation’s actually forming you [laughter].

Sy Hoekstra: True.

Engaging in Hard Conversations with Connection as a Goal is Exhausting

Sy Hoekstra: So one more thing though is, this is exhausting.

Jonathan Walton: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: One of the reasons it's exhausting is not just because the whole thing is hard, but the issue is no one's ever gonna come to you, again, I guess, unless you're a pastor, and say, “Hey, next Wednesday at 4:00 pm I wanna talk to you about immigration.”

Jonathan Walton: Right [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: They're going to come to you, you're gonna be having a dinner, and there's gonna be a completely random out of nowhere comment that you do not expect coming and your instinct may be in that moment to get angry or to just let it pass because you don't wanna deal with right now or whatever. And all that you have to take that into account. Again, over time it'll get easier to respond to random acts of racist bigotry, whatever. You know what I mean?

Jonathan Walton: [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: But it is something that's hard to do for anyone, and so you need to take the exhaustion of constantly being on alert into account when you think about, how do I wanna connect with this person? Because if it's someone where you have to be on alert the whole time and ready to go at any moment [laughs], that's difficult. And that's somebody that you might need to hang out with less or whatever.

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: You have to make those decisions for yourself. And so I'm just saying, be willing to take that into account. Be alert to that way that you can become exhausted. Because, again, if you're really tired and you just have a snap reaction, you can say stuff you regret later.

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Alright, Jonathan. Do you have… Yeah, you have thoughts. Go ahead and then we’ll get to...

Jonathan Walton: No, I was gonna say, off all of that, I think is mitigated by asking myself, “What kind of connection do I want with this person?”

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: And all of us have relationships that are not as healthy as we'd like them to be. And if my goal is not to convert someone or I don't feel this like abnormal, huge weight of this person's salvation, because that's not my responsibility, then I can say, “You know what? I just can't be with that person right now. I just can't do that.” And be able to enter into that in a healthier way, and it'll be a more loving thing.

The Power Dynamics of Difficult Conversations

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, absolutely. Let's just get into, I think that's a lot of the meat of it, but let's talk about just some of the power dynamics and other things that are going on during these conversations. Jonathan, I'm happy to start if you want, but you can go ahead if you have some things you wanna flag for people.

Jonathan Walton: Well, I think if we're not thinking about power dynamics then we're missing what's actually happening. So when men to women, able-bodied to disable-bodied, rich to poor, educated to uneducated. All of these things are playing all the time. So somebody's like, “Oh, you're playing the race card, or you're being ageist,” that's just the table. It's not a card. That's just the society we live in. We live in a segregated, stratified society. And so to be able to be aware of that, I think respects whether you are in the ecosystem or whether you've been lifted up by the ecosystem because of the hierarchies that we live in. I think that's just something we have to take into account of where we are and where the person that we are engaging with is or is perceived to be, then that can be a gift, just in the conversation. Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: So that’s sort of like keeping in mind whether you're talking to someone who's basically [laughs] above or below you on different hierarchies, which is gonna be important. Like, if you're talking, if I as a White person am talking to a Black person about race, I have to understand the dynamics. For me, at least, what I'm thinking about is I have to be personally familiar with the stuff that Black people hear all the time [laughs], and how it is often heard, and that sort of thing. Not because I need to apply a monolithic understanding of race conversations to any individual, but just to know that that individual is probably going to hear something I say this way, or feel this way about something.

Jonathan Walton: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: I'm sorry about the sirens in my background. I live in Manhattan [laughter]. So I think that's one thing. But then the other way is I as a disabled person, if I'm trying to talk to an able-bodied person about disability stuff, I just need to take into account how much more tiring that's going to be, and the work that I may have to do after the conversation to process whatever terribly insulting thing was said to me [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: And I do that all the time. That's something I have to do when I get home from dropping my daughter off at daycare. It just depends on what happened on the way there, or whatever. Another thing is that the, a person you're talking to can always walk away [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Nobody needs to be in this conversation, and that you need to be able to accept that. You need to be able to let people go the way that Jesus did when they rejected his teachings. Because if you don't do that and [laughs] you try and force them into conversations with you, again, that's what we're trying to avoid doing, is panicking about the results and trying to make somebody like you because you think the world needs to be the way that you are. That's the colonialist mindset [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yes [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: And then I think one other thing for me is how the person… this is back on the hierarchy thing. How what somebody else is saying is affecting other people around you, or the other person that that person has to interact with. Meaning the person that you're trying to connect with might be someone, like not the person you're talking to. It might be somebody who’s sitting next to you, it might be somebody who's not there.

Jonathan Walton: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: So that's just the other thing to keep in mind, because you might be trying to show somebody else that they have support, that's a huge thing. That's the person who you have a conversation with after your cohort call that you were talking about earlier. And it might be just like, if I'm talking to another White person and I know, actually doesn't matter if I know them or not, but if I'm talking about connection, if I know people of color who have to talk to this person and they're saying something that I think I can head off or correct in some way, then I should do that. And I should keep in mind my connection with that White person, but I've also top of mind it's gonna be the connection that I have with people of color who interact with that person too.

Okay, those are my thoughts on that big question. Jonathan, do we have anything else to say about these conversations before we move to Which Tab Is Still Open?

Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Well, I don't have anything more to say about that conversation. I do have two problems that our live audience will get to engage with.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: One is that I need to get… it's one o'clock.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: And so I have a time stop.

Sy Hoekstra: Right now?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And my phone is also telling me, yeah, because I was thinking, I didn't know we're gonna talk past one o'clock, but…

Sy Hoekstra: [laughter] Well, we started like 12:15 so.

Jonathan Walton: We did. We did, we did. And then my phone as we entered into this conversation is on the red.

Sy Hoekstra: Is about to die. Alright, cool. So then I think what we'll do, Jonathan, is we'll record the Which Tab Is Still Open separately, and just add that to the bonus episode.

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.

Sy Hoekstra: So again, everybody, if you wanna hear the recordings of this afterwards, and now I guess the extended version of this episode, become a paid subscriber at KTFPress.com, or just on, you're on Substack right now if you're listening to us. Become a paid subscriber, that would be amazing. If you wanna get our newsletter that's actually free, you can follow us on the free list and get us that way. Thank you so much for joining us today, we really appreciate it. Give us a five-star review on Apple or Spotify and we will see you next month. We do these once a month now that we're in the off season. And our theme song is “Citizens”, by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess. Joyce Ambale does the transcripts. I'm doing the editing right now and the production of this show, along with our paid subscribers. Thank you all so much for joining us, and we will hopefully see you next month or on the paid list.

Jonathan Walton: Yep, bye.

Sy: Bye.

[the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]

Which Tab Is Still Open?: Rev. William Barber and Poor Voters

Sy Hoekstra: And now this is the separate recording of Which Tab Is Still Open. We're gonna dive a little bit deeper into one of the articles from the newsletter that Jonathan brought up recently. Jonathan, why don't you tell us about the article, and we'll get into a little discussion about it.

Jonathan Walton: Yes. So our good friend, John Blake, award winning journalists and former guest on this podcast interviewed Reverend Dr William Barber on his thoughts after the election. It was one of the most interesting things I read post-election, because Dr Barber has a perspective most politicians and pundits just don't. He takes a perspective of poor people seriously, like Jesus [laughter]. And so one of the things he argues was that about 30 million poor people who are eligible voters usually don't vote because neither party is addressing the issues that are important to them, like minimum wage, affordable health care, strengthening unions, etc.

There was talk about strengthening unions, but not in the ways that communicate about the needs and priorities of low wage and poor workers. Republicans mostly blame poor people for their poverty, that is a consistent thing over the last 60 years. And Democrats ignore them altogether because they see them not as a viable voting block to mobilize, we should get middle class voters, which is not the same as the working poor. Barber has a history of successfully organizing multiracial coalitions of poor working class people in North Carolina to make real difference in elections. So it's not just a theoretical thing, like you can actually win elections by doing what MLK did, which Barber is in the tradition of you can have a multicultural coalition of impoverished or economically impoverished, marginalized people in the United States and actually have and hold power in the country.

So even as Kamala Harris lost in November in North Carolina, voters elected a Democratic Governor and Attorney General and got rid of the veto-proof majority in the state legislature, even with all of the nonsensical gerrymandering that exist there. So Sy, what are your thoughts on all this?

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I'm very happy that somebody in the mainstream news is actually talking about this [laughs]. That's one thing. I just haven't heard... This is one of those things where if somebody, if the Democrats got this right, they could win a lot more. I don't know how much more, Reverend Barber is very optimistic about it. I haven't dug into the numbers the way that he has as a political organizer, but he basically says if you swing like 10 percent of the poor vote in any direction in many states, and you could change a whole lot of stuff.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: I mean, you can read the article for his exact arguments. But it is definitely true that we don't address poor voters any real way, like we get stuck on, I've talked about this before, the bias toward, quote- unquote, real America, which sort of amounts to working and middle class White people and really does not address actually impoverished people. And the average, Reverend Barber is very sensitive to this, which I think is why he's effective, is the average welfare recipient in the United States today is still White. That hasn't changed. Welfare recipients are disproportionately Black and Brown. But the demographics of this country are such that you can be disproportionately high as a racial minority, but White people are still gonna be the majority of the welfare recipients.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: And the potential interest alignment between those groups has always been intentionally broken up by elites in this country. And the thing that this raises for me is our constant, throughout our whole history, our belief that basically, poor people's opinions don't matter, that poor people's interests don't matter, and maybe poor people shouldn't even be voting in the first place. We had to have a movement in this country for universal White male suffrage [laughs] in the first few decades of this country, that was a fight. And the reason was they did not want you voting originally, if you didn't own property. And the belief behind that was, if you don't have property, then you don't have a stake in society. You don't have a sufficient stake in society to, I don't know, uphold the responsibility of voting.

And in a lot of different ways that bias or that bigotry, frankly, has shot through a lot of different ways that we think about economics and politics. And just the idea like, it does not make sense to start with. If anything, the people with the most stake in how the government treats them are the people with the least power, with the with the way that society is run, are going to be the people who suffer the most when society is run poorly [laughs]. And the people who have the most independent wealth and power, meaning they can, regardless of what the government is doing, they're going to be generally alright, because they are wealthy landowners, if we're talking about the beginning of this country. They're actually kind of the least interested in how society runs, and maybe the most interested in maintaining the status quo and not having things change, which I think is what we're actually talking about.

I think we're actually talking about not having significant change [laughs] in our economics, when we talk about the people who have the most quote- unquote, responsibility or the most sense of responsibility for how the society goes. And I think all of that bleeds into how both parties think today, because both parties are made up of elites. And I think there was this huge and terrible reaction to the CEO of United Healthcare being assassinated. And I was reading some stuff about it that basically said, if you're talking about healthcare, which is one of the issues that William Barber brought up, I think the reason that a lot of people don't understand the anger and the glee over the fact that this guy was killed online, which there was a ton of, which I don't support.

But if you're trying to understand it there's so many elites who are the healthcare CEOs themselves, the politicians who write healthcare policy for whom, the biggest problem that health insurance is ever going to be is maybe a significant amount of paperwork. Maybe you get something declined or not covered, and you have to fight a little bit and then you get it covered again. It's not something that's going to bankrupt you or kill you. But that's a reality for many, many people around the country.

Jonathan Walton: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: And if it's not bankrupt or kill, it's long, grinding trauma over a long period of time.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: And it's just so easy for us to lose sight of stuff like that and then not understand as a political party, why addressing those problems directly wouldn't matter. And when I say us in that case, I mean people who are economically comfortable and who have educated and are doing okay in this society. And so all this is what Barber's comments bring up for me is, he is trying to pay attention to real needs that real people have, and alert his party, the Democrats, to the fact that if they understood and paid attention to and took those needs seriously, they would have a ton of voters who nobody's counting on right now. Like there's no strategy around them.

It's not you would be stealing voters from the Republicans, you would be bringing in a whole bunch of new voters and doing something that no one is expecting, and you'd be able to [laughs] actually make a big difference that way. Jonathan, if you have any thoughts or just your own responses to me, or your own thoughts.

Jonathan Walton: Well, I think there's a there's a few things like, yeah, I'm grateful for John Blake and for media personalities that take the time to center the most marginalized people, because that was not the conversation. All the post mortem of the Democratic Party and the celebration of what Trump did, neither one of those things included real solutions for materially impoverished people in the United States. They were not a group of people that were, when you said, counted, it's literally they're not counted. They do not count in that way. There isn't analysis, there isn't engagement. And so that I think is deeply saddening. So I'm grateful for John Blake for highlighting it. I'm grateful for Barber for the work that he does.

I think one of the things that highlights for me is the… because you use the word elite, and I think there was an essay a while ago that I read about the word elite and what it means and how we use it. Like Tucker Carlson says the elites, when in reality he is elite. Elite is Hell.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: The money that he makes, the universities that he went to, the position that he holds. Me and you are elite. We both have Ivy League educations, we both have graduate degrees. We are both financially secure, we are both educated and well connected. And the majority of, some of that, that I realize is that if I have those things I am insulated from the suffering that millions of people experience around health insurance. And because our classes in the United States are segregated and our churches are also often segregated, we are not going to have relationships with people that are struggling with these things. It's very difficult, at least for me, to live in Queens, to have conversations and relationships that are cross class.

My children participate in activities that cost money. That's a proxy for a class decision. I drive, I do not take the train. That is a class communication. I live in a home and I own it, I do not rent. That's a class. I drive to a supermarket like Costco. You have to pay for a membership to be in Costco. These are all economic decisions, and there are going to be certain groups of people that I do not interact with every single day, because I have more money. And so I think if we stretch that out across the Democratic, Republican independent leadership in our country, the majority of us do not interact with people that are from a different class, higher or lower. And so we have these caricatures of what life looks like, which is why an executive can say it doesn't matter if we deny or defend or depose or delay or all the things that were written on these bullets that came from the person that killed the United Healthcare CEO.

The reality is, I think we do not… I don't think, I know this, we do not prioritize the poor in this country. And to what you were saying, it's not that we don't prioritize poor and marginalized people, it's a strategic, intentional exclusion of them. So [laughs] like you said, the reality is, if you were not a wealthy land-owning White person, you were not allowed to vote or hold elected office. And so that's a reality. So each time a tier of people wanted to be included, there was an argument, there was a fight, there was war, there was violence. And so I believe that there is an opportunity that Barber is talking about too. It does not have to be violent to include people who are poor and marginalized.

It's really just a decision to and the time and intentionality to do it. And I wish that the church did that. I wish that politicians did that. I wish that we did that as a society. And I recognize in my own life it is even still difficult to do because of how our society has set up invisible and very real fences between economic communities.

Sy Hoekstra: And it's remarkable for you to say that in some ways. I mean, it makes sense that you would be the person to notice it, but it is remarkable in some ways for you to say it because you grew up as you've talked about many times, quite poor in the rural south.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: And you are actually directly connected to people who don't have a lot of money, right?

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: And that’s still your reality that your day to day life does not involve that many poor people.

Jonathan Walton: Right. And that is, to be totally transparent, that is one of the hardest things about getting older and having children. When we go home, when I say home I'm thinking Brodnax.

Sy Hoekstra: The small farming town in Virginia that you're from.

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Where I’m from. It's exceptionally clear to me that the access that I have to resources, the decisions that I'm making each day are infused with the wealth and resources that surround me, just by virtue of the location that I live in. So we have to do really, really, really hard work to include people who are across classes in our lives, so that when we consider what we're going to do with our power, they are included in that decision. And I think Barber did a great job of explaining why that is strategically important as well.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, so two points. One is, thank you for talking about that. For those of you who don't know, Jonathan and I are good friends. That's why I can say, “Hey Jonathan, let's talk about [laughs] your background as a poor person.”

Jonathan Walton: Yeah [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: We've talked about this a ton on the show before, Jonathan is very open about it in public. And that, I actually think, hearing you talk about the tension and how your hometown is versus your new adopted home, a lot of that is actually part of the answer. Just people being willing to be totally open about their own financial circumstances, and the differences they see between places, because that is something that we hush up and we talk about, we make it shameful to talk about your money. We make it shameful for everyone to talk about their money. You're not supposed to talk about it if you're rich, you're not supposed to talk about it if you're poor [laughs]. You're basically only supposed to talk about it if you're right where the Republicans think real Americans are [laughter]. You know what I mean?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: And yeah, just being willing to talk about it openly and in a not ashamed way actually goes a long ways to breaking some of the taboos that hold the silence on these issues. That's one thing. The other thing is, you said at the end just now, that William Barber would argue that it is strategic to basically address the needs of the poor voters who are not voting. But earlier you said it is a strategic exclusion, or like a strategic that they’re evading talking about these issues.

Jonathan Walton: Oh yeah. So in the Constitution, there is a strategic exclusion of poor, marginalized, non-White-land-owning-educated-well-healed people. There's the intentional strategic exclusion of those people for the maintenance of power and dominance, right?

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: And I think there needs to be a strategic, intentional inclusion of those people, and the intentional redistribution, and I know people hate that word, redistribution [laughs] of resources, so that people can be included in our society in a meaningful way.

Sy Hoekstra: Well, Jonathan's a communist. You heard it here first.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs] It’s not the first time I've been accused of loving the Marx.

Sy Hoekstra: Loving the… [laughs]. But I think the other aspect of it is just, the reality is that the donors that support both parties, these are not priorities of theirs. In fact, a lot of times they're opposed to the priorities of theirs. They are the healthcare CEOs. They are the people who have to negotiate against the unions. They are the people who would have to pay up the higher minimum wages. So that's part of the thing that makes it challenging. But Barber’s been able to do the work [laughs] in North Carolina and make a difference there. And it’s not… and he was one of the people, organizing like his is what made North Carolina a swing state in the first place from a traditionally deep red state. So it's worth trying, guys [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: It is.

Sy Hoekstra: Take a look, Democrats.

Jonathan Walton: Worth trying.

Sy Hoekstra: It's worth trying [laughs]. It's not just worth trying for political victories either. It's also worth actually addressing poor people's needs [laughs], to be clear about what I'm saying.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And I think I was convicted. Like, Shane Claiborne said this and others like Merton has said this, and Howard Thurman said this, and MLK said it, and Jesus said it. The center of the church should be marginalized people. That should actually be the thing. “The poor will always be with us,” is not an endorsement of poverty. That's not what that is. You know what I mean? [laughter] Some people were like, “Well, people are supposed to be poor, and I'm supposed to…”

Sy Hoekstra: I know. I know. Or, the poor will always be with us, and that means that we should not try to end poverty, because Jesus said you can't end it.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, right. That, no. But the reality that that is a broken, tragic theology that aligns with White American folk religion and requires no sacrifice from people who are on the upper end of a dominant hierarchy. That's what that is. Yeah. I hope that even if the political parties of the United States do not pay attention to what to what Barber is saying, that the Church will. That would be great.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Amen to that. Alright. I think we're just gonna end it there. I already did the outro and everything, the credits and all that stuff in the Live episode, so I think Jonathan and I at this point are just going to say thank you all so much for listening. We will see you in January for the next episode. Goodbye.

Jonathan Walton: Thank you. Bye [laughter].

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: How what somebody else is saying is affecting other people around you, or the other person that that person has to interact with, meaning the person who you

Jonathan Walton: [burps].

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs], remember, I can't mute you if you just burp into your microphone.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, sir. My apologies. [laughter] Welcome to live everyone.

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to live Substack.

Jonathan Walton: I drank a ton of water. They saw me just do that [laughter].